December 2020: vol. IV
December 2020: vol. IV
The Great Conjunction and the beautiful view from a beer can
Yesterday marked the shortest day of the year, as well as the closest visible alignment of Jupiter and Saturn since 1226. As with any notable reordering of the heavens, this so-called Great Conjunction caused countless prognostications on TikTok and Twitter. According to different astrologists, the alignment heralded “mass third eye awakenings,” “new developments in space travel,” “the power to manifest our dream world,” and the acceleration of time. According to one much-memed tweet, it was supposed to unlock the “Real DNA” of black people. Astrologer Susan Miller excitedly claimed that the conjunction will set “the tone for the ethos for the next 20 years affecting the arts, music, theatre, literature, entertainment, designer fashion, food, music, mathematics, science, politics, and the government agenda. In other words, everything!”
This is hardly a modern affair, of course. 8th-century Persian astrologer Abū Ma'shar wrote grandly of planetary alignments in his Book of the indications of the planetary conjunctions—though presumably his prophecies were not, as Miller’s are, “an in-app purchase […] for $4.99 a month.”
ben tapeworm
on the turntable
A Small Death - Choctaw singer-songwriter Samantha Crain’s sixth full-length album delves into a series of mental and physical hardships, including the loss of the use of her hands for a period of time following a traumatic car accident.
from the observatory
Regina Valkenborgh set the record for the longest exposure photograph by making a pinhole camera out of a beer can, leaving it in a British observatory, and forgetting about it for eight years. The result is a lovely blue etching of the sun rising and falling 2,953 times:
from my incoming texts
“Rode a train for 9 hours today”
“i want to go to the club so bad”
“I remember blacking out and waking up under a flag for the antichrist lol”
“When I’m wrong I’m typically really really wrong...”